The Cottage at Firefly Lake

by Jen Gilroy

  The truth hit him with the unexpectedness of a sucker punch.

  Sean’s stomach quivered as he turned in the chair. Through the half-open window behind the desk, pine trees bracketed the point and framed the view he’d looked at his whole life. A crescent moon hung low and etched a silver trail across the water. After almost half a lifetime of his missing her, being angry with her, loving her, and hating her, Charlie was back on the other side of that narrow spit of land.

  And although she’d tried to hide it, she was hurt…but he’d said she could put that canoe in the boathouse as easy as Ty. His heart clenched. He’d said worse, too. Spoken to her like he never spoke to any woman, let alone someone who’d once been so much a part of his heart.

  Guilt stabbed at him like the red-hot poker in the old woodstove come winter. If he’d known what she’d gone through, he’d have handled things differently. If the sight of her on the porch of that cottage hadn’t shaken him to the core, he’d have been civil. The gentleman his folks had raised him to be.

  Sean stood, slammed the window closed, and pulled at the blinds to shut out the night. Charlie fought for everybody else, everywhere else, but it didn’t change the fact she’d given up on him, given up on them, and run out of his life without a backward glance.

  Trevor’s words rang in his ears. He’d given his life to this business. He’d nurtured it, grown it, and protected it. He checked the time on his laptop. If he hurried, he could get into town before the softball game ended.

  It was too late to fix what had gone wrong between him and Charlie, but Carmichael’s was different. He wouldn’t let the business or his family be hurt.

  Tendrils of mist clung to the surface of the lake when Charlie came out of the woods on Monday morning, her sandals noiseless on the carpet of pine needles. The water was as smooth as glass, the air still, washed clean with dew. At the edge of the beach, she toed off her sneakers and left them beside the granite boulder eighteen more years of winter storms hadn’t budged. She set her camera on its flat top and rolled up the legs of her sweats. When she waded into the water, its coldness numbed her toes.

  Behind her, a branch snapped. She tensed with the alertness years of reporting from war zones had made second nature. Creeping out of the lake, she curled her fingers around a rock. Its edges dug into her palm. A crow swooped out of a tall pine, its cry shattering the silence.

  As Charlie turned, a big black dog loped out of the forest. When it spotted her, it bounded across the sand, barking, and skidded to a stop inches from her feet.

  Sean’s dog.

  She relaxed her grip on the rock and shoved her sweats down her legs one-handed to hide her scar. Since the dog was here, Sean or his son wouldn’t be far behind. Or Sean’s wife. Charlie’s stomach rolled. “You’re a good dog, aren’t you?”

  The dog barked louder.

  Sean jogged out of the woods, and a jolt of desire zinged through her. A white T-shirt molded to his chest, and black running shorts hugged his thighs. His athletic shoes hit the ground in a steady rhythm, and an iPod was clipped to his waist. He was all sexy ridges and big, powerful male. A little bit sweaty and way too tempting.

  He stopped beside the dog, grabbed its collar with one hand, and yanked the earbuds out of his ears with the other. “Shadow won’t hurt you.” His gaze zeroed in on the rock. “You weren’t going to throw that at her, were you?”

  “Of course not.” Charlie dropped the rock on the sand, and her eyes landed on his lean, muscular legs. Sensual awareness hit her with the force of a tsunami.

  “Then why were you holding on to that rock like you were going to aim it at someone?” Damp from his run, the hair at his temples curled in soft tendrils.

  Her fingers tingled. “You never know who might be in those woods.” If they were watching her and waiting to strike when she least expected it.

  Sean gave her a half smile, a quick tilt of his lips gone almost before she registered it. “You don’t remember much about Firefly Lake. All you’re going to find in those woods is folks looking for some privacy.”

  Charlie remembered all right. From the time they’d hit fifteen, she and Sean had also been looking for privacy in these same woods. “It’s six in the morning.” Heat crept up her cheeks.

  He smiled again, teasing with a familiar sexy edge, and the quivery feeling in her stomach intensified. “You were never a morning person, but here you are, up with the dawn.” He moved toward the tree line and stretched one long leg over a fallen log. “You still like taking pictures?” He inclined his head to her camera.

  “I do.” Charlie pushed away the memory of his legs wrapped around hers, his face inches away, flushed and intent on pleasuring her, like she was pleasuring him. She sat on the log with a thump as Shadow darted toward her and flopped at Charlie’s feet.

  “Get any good shots?” Sean finished stretching and sat beside her, arranging his big body with a lean grace no other man she’d known had ever matched.

  “The light isn’t right.” Heat sizzled along her nerve ends.

  “You didn’t come out here to take photos, did you?” On Friday he’d been clean-shaven, but today dark-blond stubble shadowed his jaw, giving him a rolled-out-of-bed look, which turned her insides to mush.

  “I’m still jet-lagged.” She settled for a half-truth. “Since I couldn’t sleep, I thought a walk would help.” And distract her from the pain in her leg, which, despite the little white pills, had kept her awake, things she didn’t want to think about going around in her head.

  And distract her from the dream she’d had in a fitful moment of sleep just before dawn. Sean braced on his forearms above her and his body deep inside hers. The love on his face, which had morphed into distrust.

  “So did the walk help?” Compassion and understanding, acceptance too, flickered in the depths of his blue eyes. The real Sean, not the dream phantom.

  “You know, don’t you? About what happened to me?” She waited and bit her lower lip. She could handle his teasing, handle his anger even. What she couldn’t handle was his compassion, the way he always understood her.

  “Type Charlotte Gibbs into any Internet search engine. A lot comes up.”

  A lot she probably wished hadn’t. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read online.”

  “Some of those newspapers are reliable enough.” He sounded neutral, not questioning, but not judging either.

  She dug her feet into the sand, cool and damp, not yet warmed by the heat of the day. “I was only doing my job.” But she’d always done more than her job and volunteered for the toughest assignments because she was a solo act.

  “A roadside bomb went off twenty feet in front of you. You were lucky.” His gaze pinned hers. “Despite everything.”

  And because of that luck, she’d vowed to make some changes in her life, to start over and use the second chance she’d been given. “I’m glad my mom…she didn’t live to see what happened.” She blinked, and the sudden dampness behind her eyes caught her unaware.

  “You want to talk about it?” His voice was gentle.

  Charlie shook her head, tried to smile and failed. Once, Sean had been not only her lover but her best friend as well. The one she’d gone running with, pounding along the trails on this side of the lake. The one she could talk to about anything.

  “I can’t.” Not to Mia, not to Max, her editor, and not to the counselor the AP made her see for what the doctors said was post-traumatic stress disorder. A neat label for the messy tangle that had become her life. Whenever she tried to talk about her feelings, the words stuck in her throat and choked her.

  She reached for Shadow and stroked the dog’s silky ears. Sean wasn’t the boy he’d once been. He was a man, with a wife and family. “Won’t someone—your wife—wonder where you are?”

  Sean looked out at the lake. The sun had burned away the last of the mist, and a pair of ducks swam in a neat line toward the reeds. “No.” He turned back to her, fine lines around his eyes and outlin
ing his nose and mouth showing her the man, not the boy. “I’m divorced. Sarah’s my ex-wife. We have joint custody and this was her weekend with Ty. She’ll drop him off in a few hours for work.”

  “I see.” Charlie didn’t see. The Sean she’d known had been a forever kind of guy. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He shrugged. “Sarah and I are happier apart than we ever were together. She’s got a new life and two more kids. Her husband’s an accountant in Kincaid. Ty has two families.” He brushed sand off his shorts. “She wanted someone different, that’s all.”

  Charlie’s breath hitched. Had Sean wanted someone different too? She picked up a stone from the beach, jet black and worn smooth, and turned it over in her hand. Standing, she moved to the water’s edge and tossed the stone, the splash sending ripples pooling across the surface of the lake.

  “You’ve lost your touch.” A pebble ricocheted past her, skimming the surface five times before sliding under the water. “It’s in the wrist, remember?” Sean found another stone and handed it to her. The brief touch of his fingers against hers made her skin burn.

  Charlie tried again, flicking her wrist in the long-forgotten childhood movement. “One, two.”

  “Better.” Sean scooped up a handful of small stones from the water’s edge and gave her half. “What about you? Did you ever marry?”

  “No husband. No kids either.” She pasted on a smile and stared at the lake. It still had the same reedy smell, and little foam-topped waves tumbled onto the shore with a soft hiss.

  “Why not?” He sent another stone skipping across the sapphire-blue water. “You must have had opportunities.”

  “It’s hard to have a relationship when you’re only in the same city with someone three months out of twelve.” She tossed one of her stones, and it sank near the shore with a dull plop. “The men I meet, we’re both always on the road. A few weeks here and there between assignments. That kind of life’s no basis for a real relationship.”

  Maybe if she’d loved someone enough to want to build a life together, she’d have found a way to work it out. Or found a man who was willing to work it out with her. Instead, she always broke things off before they got serious.

  The sun glinted off Sean’s hair, still the color of ripe wheat. “You just never met the right guy.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.” Or maybe she had, and nobody else had ever come close. The handful of pebbles slipped out of her grasp and landed on the wet sand with a thud.

  “What’s with you, Gibbs? You always were a pro at skipping stones.”

  “I’m out of practice.” Nowadays she was more used to people who threw rocks. Or worse.

  Sean picked up one of the stones she’d dropped. “I don’t recall you being a quitter.” He reached for her hand and tucked the stone into her palm.

  “It’s only a game.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he held it fast, tracing his thumb around the faint ridge of scar tissue that bisected her left index finger and stretched from her knuckle to the fleshy part where it joined her thumb.

  “I remember when you got this.” His voice roughened, and Charlie’s heart kicked into her throat.

  “I caught it in that fishhook.” She swallowed. “You drove me to the hospital to get it stitched since Mom and Dad and Mia were at the Inn on the Lake for the end-of-summer dance.” And Sean had soothed her with gentle words and an even gentler touch.

  “You could have gone to the dance, but you stayed with me to close the boathouse. You didn’t even cry when the hook went in.” His voice low, intimate, he moved and closed the space between them. “You were the bravest girl I ever knew.”

  “I’m not that girl anymore.” Her voice caught and she focused on the churned-up sand at her feet.

  Maybe she’d never been that girl. Mia claimed the pretty-daughter crown, the perfect daughter who always did what their parents expected. But Charlie was the family disappointment, the one who chafed against authority and who embraced the role of the feisty, take-charge, always-in-control girl so nobody would guess how much she hurt inside. How she’d felt she never belonged.

  “I know you aren’t.” Sean stood so close his musky, male scent tickled her nose. He dropped her hand and cupped her jaw, his breath feathering the hair that grazed her chin. “I think you’re still pretty brave. After that bomb went off, you risked your life to try to save your colleague, even though you were hurt too.”

  Charlie’s breath hitched. “Like I said, it was my job. When you’re on assignment, your colleagues are like your family. You look out for each other.”

  He moved even closer until the blue of the sky and the lake mingled with the deeper blue of his eyes. “Why, Charlie?”

  “Why what?” The tendrils of hair at his temple were so close, she could reach up and touch them. Trail her fingers down past his ear to the sensitive spot on his neck.

  “You and I always looked out for each other.” His voice hardened, and he dipped his head, his lips inches from hers.

  Mesmerized by the desire in his gaze, she lifted her hand to touch one blond curl. “I couldn’t—”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t.” He closed the remaining space between them and tunneled his hands in her hair.

  “I…” Her legs trembled and she swayed into his body.

  “Aw hell, Sunshine.” He ground out the words through his teeth before he covered her mouth in a kiss that was both heartbreaking and punishing. Sweetness, lust, and anger mixed in one.

  In spite of herself, Charlie let her mouth open under his. She grabbed at his forearms to keep her balance as almost-forgotten sensations churned through her. He deepened the kiss and she moaned. Even when they were kids, learning about love together, Sean had always known how to make her respond, his touch and his mouth sure. With a gasp she tore her mouth away from his and let go of his arms.

  “This is a mistake.” She stepped back, light-headed, her legs shaky.

  “A big mistake.” Sean’s voice rasped and his breathing was unsteady.

  Charlie wiped a hand across her mouth, the imprint of his lips still there, his taste still strong, reeling from how fast the old heat between them had sparked and flared into life. “I shouldn’t have…”

  “I shouldn’t have either.” He glanced at Shadow digging a hole farther down the beach. “There’s something about you, Charlie. There always has been.”

  “There’s something about you too, Sean, but I can’t, we can’t…”

  “I know.” His eyes were bleak, two blue flints when he turned back to her. “When are you selling?”

  “After the land survey is done. The developer is keen, and when they make an offer there’ll be no reason to wait.”

  “You think people who come here to stay in some fancy hotel will want to skip stones on a beach?” Sean untangled his iPod earbuds. “Or go skinny-dipping in the moonlight because there’s nobody else around and they can?”

  Charlie gasped as he leaned in and touched her cheek, a faint grazing of his fingers against her skin. “Don’t.”

  “Or have you forgotten about that too?” He took his hand away, but his eyes raked her from head to toe and lingered on the curve of her breasts.

  “That’s the past. What would Mia and I do with a cottage here? With Mom gone, there’s no reason to hang on to the place.”

  “People in Firefly Lake don’t want some developer coming in.” Sean’s jaw was tight, his face all hard planes and angles. “Businesses around here are family-owned, but you think you can come back, after all these years, and sell out without considering everybody who lives here year-round? People who’ll still live here after you’re long gone again?”

  “I don’t. Mia and I—”

  “I’m not going to make this easy for you.” A pulse in Sean’s jaw twitched, the only indication he held on to his control by a thread. “None of us are. You should think again before you make that deal. Think about what you’re signing away.”

  “That’s a low blow.” Char
lie took a step back. “The guy I knew always played fair. He’d never stoop to emotional manipulation.”

  “The girl I knew was my best friend. The one I trusted more than anyone. But you broke that trust, didn’t you?”

  His words ricocheted into the sudden chasm between them to lodge in Charlie’s heart. “That girl’s gone.” The words came out in a croak through her stiff lips.

  His voice was bitter. “That guy is too.”

  Chapter Three

  Ty’s dad, who’d just kissed Auntie Charlotte, was less than fifteen feet away. Naomi ducked behind a tree and held her breath as he and Shadow disappeared along a narrow trail, no more than a green outline hacked out of the bushes.

  So much for thinking she could bump into Ty by accident. Instead, she’d gotten herself trapped in the woods between the cottage and the beach. Even though when she’d seen him on the path behind the marina yesterday, Ty hadn’t said he was going fishing this morning.

  Naomi wasn’t spying exactly. The marina was right next door, and her mom kept nagging her to get off the couch and get some exercise. It wasn’t as if there was much else to do around here.

  She lifted her hair off her neck and waved away a cloud of mosquitoes. Auntie Charlotte was still on the beach. She shifted from one foot to the other and touched a hand to her cheek and her hair. Like Ty’s dad had done.

  Naomi fingered the phone in her skirt pocket, wishing she could text Alyssa, her best friend back home in Dallas. Although she was too far away to hear what they’d said, what she’d seen Auntie Charlotte and Ty’s dad doing was big. Too big to share with Alyssa, or anyone.

  Naomi stuck her head around the gnarled tree trunk. The coast was clear. She eased through the undergrowth and rejoined the sandy path, forcing her legs into an easy stroll.

  “Honey?” Rounding a curve in the trail, she jumped at the sound of Auntie Charlotte’s voice. “What are you doing here?”